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A Gardener’s Stage: Park Avenue

Exterior Decorator Peter Van de Wetering, the son of a Dutch gardener, immigrated to New York as a teenager and now owns a flourishing greenhouse business on Long Island. Though many New Yorkers associate Mr. Van de Wetering, 82, primarily with the tulips that line the malls along Park Avenue in spring, he is also responsible for the 30,000 begonias that arrive once the tulips depart. And he planted many of the trees along the malls.Credit
Marcus Yam for The New York Times

Peter Van de Wetering, for 54 years the unrivaled tulip impresario of Park Avenue, grew up in a lush world. As a child raised in The Hague, his earliest memories were of the greenhouses where his father produced seeds for vegetable growers and profusions of flowers — freesias, anemones and of course tulips, a Dutch obsession that survived the ruinous frenzy of tulipmania that swept Holland in the 17th century.

In 1951, at the age of 19, the son left war-ravaged Europe aboard the Volander, a Dutch troop carrier bound for the New World. “When I arrived, I knew no one,” said Mr. Van de Wetering, balding today at 82 but retaining an almost musical accent. Through a stroke of luck, he landed a job with a Long Island nurseryman, and a few years later he was introduced to the rarefied world of the Upper East Side. “I worked for a big Park Avenue florist,” he said, “and I’d hop a taxi and deliver pots of flowers to people like Gloria Vanderbilt, who would fill her patio with them.” In 1958, shortly after opening a modest nursery on the North Fork of Long Island, he won a commission to plant 10,000 daffodils at United Nations Plaza. The young Dutch émigré with the green thumb was on his way.

Not that everything went smoothly during those early years. “There wasn’t much knowledge at that time,” Mr. Van de Wetering said. “I remember I was asked to check a planting that was done and I found that the entire bed of hyacinth bulbs were planted upside down.”

But triumphs outnumbered missteps, and in 1959 he was chosen by the city to landscape the center malls along a broad swath of Park Avenue, a job that would in many respects define his life.

Mr. Van de Wetering remained the mall’s premier gardener when the philanthropist Mary Lasker stepped in during the 1970s to help the near-bankrupt metropolis foot the bill for the planting, and continued in that role when the Fund for Park Avenue took over the project in 1980. Barbara McLaughlin, the fund’s president, describes him as an institution.

“He’s given Park Avenue 50 great years,” she said the other day, shortly before this year’s tulip crop made its appearance. “He’s very unassuming, but he knows his stuff. He’s so wise, and such a remarkable resource. For him, it’s not just a job.”

Over the years, the plantings have expanded into a year-round undertaking, with tulips and cherry trees in spring, begonias in summer, hawthorn trees ablaze with red buds in fall and lighted fir trees in winter, not to mention lashings of public art — this year, oversized works by the Cuban sculptor Alexandre Arrechea. Total price tag, excluding costs related to the art: nearly half a million dollars, money that comes to the fund in the form of contributions from the community.

Mr. Van de Wetering’s memories of Mrs. Lasker are both vivid and mixed. “She was not easy,” he said the other day in the fund’s Park Avenue office, his gaze drifting to the flower beds 10 stories below in search of incipient signs of greenery. “But if you did things right, she recommended you to the whole world, to all her friends. She wanted value for her money. And she was the one who put me in business.”

That business, Van de Wetering Greenhouses, an enterprise on Long Island that began with a wooden frame structure where Mr. Van Wetering grew tomatoes that he sold at the local grocery store, has expanded mightily over the years. Today he and his wife, Joyce, preside over a phalanx of computerized, climate-controlled greenhouses in Jamesport, where among other things he grows from seed the 30,000 begonias that will line the mall once the tulips depart. But tulips are his specialty, and what he does not know about this myth-encrusted flower is hardly worth knowing.

For the past decade he has bought his bulbs from a Dutch grower called Jansen’s Overseas B.V. Every fall, a 10-member crew plants some 70,000 bulbs with breakneck speed along a mile-and-a-half stretch of the avenue, from 54th to 86th Street. Although tulips are perennials, they can be temperamental, and so the old bulbs are replaced each year to ensure quality and to make possible the changing colors. Because gardeners work months in advance, as soon as this year’s crop blossoms, he will order next year’s bulbs.

Despite the variety of plantings along the malls, tulips are what people typically think of when they picture those strips of green, which sit atop the Metro-North railroad tracks that lead to and from Grand Central Terminal. Seduced by the tulips’ brilliance and flash-in-the-pan brevity, Upper East Siders monitor their progress with a passion verging on obsession.

Photo

Some 70,000 bulbs create a flowered carpet more than a mile long, from East 54th to East 86th Street.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

The first tiny green shoots arrive as early as the end of March, “quicker than they might otherwise,” Mr. Van de Wetering explained, “because they’re sitting on railroad tracks, so the ground is warmer and they come faster.” Plump globes of color so incandescent they seem to be lighted from within arrive a few weeks later, although how long they will last is anyone’s guess.

“We wish for two weeks,” Mr. Van de Wetering said, “though if it’s 80 or 90 degrees” — springtime temperatures not unknown in an era of global warming — “it can be much less. Three days of that sort of weather, and they’re finished.”

Color, of course, is a critical part of the tulip’s appeal. Every year, after weighing Mr. Van de Wetering’s recommendation, the fund makes its choice. In 2009 the tulips were orange (Blushing Apeldoorn, a Darwin hybrid), to honor the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York Harbor. In 2010 they were white (Ivory Floradale, another Darwin hybrid) to honor the fund’s 30th anniversary.

This year the tulips are a brilliant red, the Darwin hybrid Oxford, to be specific, so they can enjoy the bounce of a tie-in with the Broadway musical “Annie.” Guests invited to the annual tulip party sponsored by Scully & Scully, the high-end home décor shop, wore color-coordinated outfits in shades of crimson, ruby and garnet. Ms. McLaughlin, the fund’s president, was resplendent in red sling-back pumps. Eleni’s New York bakery supplied matching tulip cookies.

Mr. Van de Wetering says tulips are easy: “They like sandy soil. They can’t grow everywhere. But except for watering, once they’re planted, there’s not much to do.”

Yet even he admits that being the tulip impresario of Park Avenue is no cakewalk. Lack of sunshine caused by the towering buildings that line the strip can be punishing. Smog, car exhaust and grime from nonstop traffic seems to worsen every year. Potholes collect water, and the splashing that results can rot the hardiest bulb. “You have to be on your toes,” Mr. Van de Wetering said, summing up the challenges.

His secrets include using larger size bulbs — “Don’t go for the small ones, it doesn’t pay” — and half the recommended amount of fertilizer. He is proud to say he has never lost a tulip crop over all these years.

For decades, Mr. Van de Wetering was on the road at 4:30 most mornings, preparing for a day of planting, weeding, mowing or pruning. While he continues to supervise the planting of the malls, his son, Anton, 45, who is the vice president of his father’s business and lives near his parents, has taken over much of the actual physical labor. “He does the maintenance and the landscaping part,” the father said. “He loves it and always likes an excuse to visit the city. So do I, to be honest.”

At least once a week during the growing season, the younger Mr. Van de Wetering trundles up with a 1,500-gallon truck and proceeds slowly from south to north, watering the thirsty begonias, trees and shrubs along his route. He works from 8 at night until 7 the next morning; when the first tank is empty, he stops at a fire hydrant, required permit in hand, to fill up a second one.

The weekend after the final brilliant petal has fallen, in a quaint tradition beloved in the neighborhood, residents are allowed to dig up the bulbs. Many take them to their homes in the Hamptons for transplanting to summer houses by the sea.

And in answer to those Long Island neighbors who have complained about deer nibbling the tops off their tulips, Mr. Van de Wetering can impart some hard-won wisdom. “I had my own deer and they ate all the bulbs,” he said. “So now I put chicken wire over the bulbs. And it works.”

EXTERIOR DECORATOR: Peter Van de Wetering, the son
of a Dutch gardener,
immigrated to New York as a
teenager and now owns a
flourishing greenhouse business
on Long Island. Though many
New Yorkers associate Mr. Van
de Wetering, 82, primarily with
the tulips that line the malls
along Park Avenue in spring, he
is also responsible for the
30,000 begonias that arrive
once the tulips depart. And he
planted many of the trees along
the malls.

A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2013, on page RE1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Gardener’s Stage: Park Avenue. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe